As a working journalist he served the Daily Star and Daily Mail before moving on to a post as deputy editor of the

As a working journalist, he served the Daily Star and Daily Mail before moving on to a post as deputy editor of the The Express.It was at The Express, in 1996, that Monk acquired two pre-publication copies of Allan Starkie’s biography of the Duchess of York. Nothing surprising about that: newspapers routinely catch early sight of such things so that they can decide whether to bid for serialisation rights On that occasion, someone seems to have had a brighter idea. Monk’s wife, Anita, was arrested at Heathrow airport with one of the books in her possession. In the subsequent trial, she acknowledged that she had agreed to sell it to The Sun.Monk left The Express “by mutual agreement”. He moved briefly to The Sun, but the lure and lucre of PR was powerful.

He did not stay long before taking up his position at the MacLaurin agency. From that vantage-point, he has been able to renew his links with the Daily Express under the ownership of Richard Desmond. Many veterans of the old Express have found it too hard to work with the creator of Asian Babes. But Monk is broad-minded and appears untroubled by Desmond’s links with pornography He is Desmond’s PR guru.The arrangement is not exclusive.

Monk and MacLaurin used to provide a similar service to Andrew Neil, publisher of The Scotsman. Last Thursday, Neil’s Edinburgh broadsheet surprised Britain by revealing that legal documents relating to Foster’s deportation had been faxed to Cherie Blair’s private apartment at No 10. But Neil says he has not spoken to Monk for 18 months.There would be no point. Monk is emphatic about the nature of his role in the tale of Cherie’s flats.

Last week, he said: “We want to make clear that we are not hawking Peter Foster’s story around, and that our advice through Caplin to Foster is that, if you sell the story, the consequences will be 10 times worse than for Paul Burrell.”Neither Monk nor Brian MacLaurin, chairman of the media agency (and an old friend of Andrew Neil), is employed to represent Peter Foster. Their guidance to the convicted con man has been filtered through Caplin.Despite the air of sleaze surrounding the affair, the ever-tolerant Monk is clearly enjoying himself. Last year, he faced the anger and resentment of his former colleagues because of another of his clients, the pop star Michael Jackson. Unkind words were spoken by the journalists kept loitering in lashing rain outside the Oxford Union as they awaited Jackson’s fashionably late arrival Cheriegate must be more fun.. I would never have believed it could happen, but, over the past couple of months of listening to Start the Week on Radio 4 each Monday morning, I’ve started to grow nostalgic for Melvyn Bragg.